Vineyard Christian Church of Evanston

6

Pastor Debby Wright, the guest speaker, has responded to this survey here.

Pastor Steve Nicholson, senior pastor of Evanston Vineyard, has responded to this survey here.

This review was first posted on our eBay atheist blog. You can read the original comments here.

This was the last church visit for Off-the-Map and I just wanted to thank everyone for reading and commenting. It was fun and I learned a lot. I will now be updating my own website (www.friendlyatheist.com) more often, but still making occasional comments here.

The visit yesterday was quite the experience. I went to a Vineyard church in Evanston, IL and Jim accompanied me. We only spoke before and after the sermon so the experience could be as objective as possible.

The majority of the service was (now) typical. The music was nice to listen to, though the lyrics are still repetitious. I’m pretty sure that any 4-year-old can write “God is strong,” “God is Good,” etc. which is probably why the music isn’t as captivating to me.

The sermon was spoken by a woman, Debby Wright, who was visiting from a British Vineyard church. She told stories of how the church had helped people back home (as opposed to a sermon talking about a Biblical passage). The stories were powerful, but as a skeptic, I did question some of them. For example, she told one story of helping a prostitute back home. The prostitute had a baby (I think she did, anyway… the point is that a baby was involved). The baby got sick. They all prayed together. The baby got better. Her conclusion was that the prayer worked, and obviously I disagreed– I would think there’s a natural explanation for it.

However, I did like her stories of her church just doing random acts of kindness for homeless people and those less fortunate, even though it was in the name of Jesus. In general, I’m never really interested in the reason you do good things, but I’m glad you’re doing them. I wish more churches were more like that. And it doesn’t matter if it’s because of Jesus, Allah, or No One that you do these things. Clearly, her group was helping people out. And for that, she should be commended. Atheists do this, too, but not as often as we should.

One other story that stuck out was that she was with a sick friend and wanted to help her. The pastor (pastress?) said she knew if she spoke in tongues her friend would feel better, so she did it! She admitted she just made up what she was saying, but she knew it would help her friend. She said this story with the point of being humorous, but it reinforced the idea that no one is actually speaking in tongues. You might be making it up. Or you might be saying any random gibberish and actually convince yourself you can speak in tongues. I’ve never heard of any two strangers whose “speaking in tongues” story corroborated. No one’s ever speaking the same language.

In the same way, she mentioned stories of people shaking with the spirit of the Lord. And a few people have said to me they have had similar experiences. Again, I haven’t had the experience, but I do often wonder if the people are subconsciously doing it on their own and convincing themselves it was God.

The strangest twist occurred at the end of the sermon. The pastor had told a story of how she knew someone who had a spinal cord problem and as people touched the person, the spinal cord immediately realigned. (I’ve also never heard that story in any medical journal, and if anyone could explain what happened, it’d be Nobel Prize winning research, so forgive me for being suspect of the truthfulness of this story.) After the sermon she asked the audience if anyone had back problems. Some raised their hands. She asked the audience if anyone felt a tingling in their arms because it was a sign from God (Well, considering most peoples’ hands were in one position for the past hour, I would be shocked if many hands were *not* tingling…). She told the tinglers– and anyone else who wanted to pray– to put their hands on the backs of the people who had back problems. All of a sudden, the congregation became small groups of people with someone at each center. They stayed in this position as others left the auditorium– some stayed for quite some time afterwards.

That was strange.

I didn’t hear any shoutings that someone was cured. And I don’t think anything actually happened. If there’s any benefit to this, it’s that the people with back problems could physically be touched (that’s always a good thing) and know that even strangers are caring about them (which is also always good). So I could see how this helps emotionally. Physically, though, I have no reason to think this accomplished anything.

It all goes back to the idea that we believe whatever we want to believe. And we credit God with the good things in our lives but don’t always condemn God for any bad things. I heard stories of how God healed the sick but not stories of how God made them sick in the first place.

Jim and I actually started getting emotional about this healing service when we discussed it afterwards. He was defending it, and I was against it. He can comment on his side of it, but my perspective was that while putting hands on peoples’ backs hurts doesn’t hurt me, the problem is that I’m afraid people might actually think this works and stop seeing real doctors as a result. I don’t want people I care about to resort to alternative medicines or faith healing because I know there’s no scientific evidence that it works. And they could be harming themselves in the process. Without putting words in Jim’s mouth, his response was that no one was doing this is lieu of visiting a professional. There’s a wonderful website, www.quackwatch.org, that details the problems with alternative medicine. In this case, I urge you to read this piece: http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/faith.html.

This wasn’t a Benny Hinn type of touch-the-forehead-and-fall-down faith healing. It gave power to the people to work as agents of God. I can see why it’s popular. But popular doesn’t mean it’s right.

Case in point: I read this book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman about a group of people called the Hmongs who would often see people shaking in their community. They said the “spirit” caught them and revered this and refused medical treatment as a result. Which was a problem since the people really had epilepsy. I’m saying this only because there is serious harm that can come from thinking this stuff actually is good for us.

Jim defended this practice, though, and he did have some valid points. He said this was the type of church he used to pastor so he knows about these practices– and I’ll admit, I know very little outside what I saw. Jim also corrected me on some of my judgments about this service, which I think you need to hear before commenting on this piece.

Anyway, it was a very nice bookend to the whole churching experience. I look forward to reading your comments and I hope you’ll continue coming to this site and my own at www.friendlyatheist.com.